What's The Best Web Browser For HTML5 Video Playback?
You might have heard about HTML5 and specifically HTML5 Video in the news lately. How the new standard is supposed to replace Flash based video players eventually. Some websites are already experimenting with HTML5 video players including YouTube and Dailymotion.
Two standards are currently competing with each other to become the HTML5 video standard: Ogg Theora and h.264. This would not be such a big deal for computer users if most browser developer's would not have decided to support only one of the two formats.
If you visit YouTube's experimental HTML5 video page you notice that they make use of the h.264 video codec meaning that browsers that only support Ogg will not be able to play the videos. Dailymotion on the other hand supports only Ogg, Theora + Vorbis and not h.264.
This means that users will run into situations where they cannot play HTML5 videos even if they browser supports HTML5 because of the different standards and the fighting that goes along with it. It is especially problematic since users can run into various troubles here.
It is first the choice of web browser that may determine which sites are supported and which are not, and second it is the sites that may only support one of the two technologies instead of both.
Here is a list of web browsers and the HTML5 video formats they support (please note that we have updated the listing below as of November 23, 2016)
- Google Chrome: h.264, Ogg Theora, WebM with VP8 and VP9
- Internet Explorer 9: h.264
- Mozilla Firefox: h.264, Ogg Theora, WebM with VP8 and VP9
- Safari (on Windows): MPEG-4 ASP, h.264
- Opera: h.264, Ogg Theora, WebM with VP8 and VP9
- Vivaldi: h.264, Ogg Theora, WebM with VP8 and VP9
- Microsoft Edge: MPEG-4 ASP, h.264, h.265
Which browser is the best for end users? Google Chrome 3 and newer versions obviously as it is the only web browser that supports both video standards.
Most browsers support both h.264 and Ogg Theora. Only Microsoft Edge supports h.265 right now. This is one of the reasons why it supports 4K streaming while other browser's don't currently.
Considering that h.265 support is a big step forward, Edge may be the browser of choice for you when it comes to HTML5 video content on the Internet. It is however only available on Windows 10 machines.
Tip: You can check your browser's support for video codecs here.
Update: Mozilla finally came to their senses and has started to implement h.264 support into the browser. First development versions of the browser are already available and it is only a matter of months before all Firefox users get access to h.264 HTML5 video contents as well.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.